This picture was taken in 1904 and shows Alice between her uncle and mother. Credit: Photographer Arnold Genthe, image owner Library of Congress

Survivor's story

There was a steady stream of Chinese immigrants to San Francisco before the earthquake. But the quake and the fires that followed literally obliterated Chinatown. Plans to rebuild it were stopped in their tracks. In the face of racism and an anti-Chinese labour movement, the community made it known that if their presence wasn’t desired, they’d take their considerable economic clout elsewhere.

Alice Sue Fun lived in Chinatown in 1906. More than 70 years later, she told her story in an interview with the author and historian Judy Yung.

Alice’s story
“In the morning I remember, you know, how everything fell off the shelf, just everything fell off the shelf and we had one of those stoves made out of brick. My father cooked, and the stove has crumbled so my father was very worried. 

"But very soon we had to evacuate, we had to leave the place, we had to evacuate.  There were soldiers with guns.

“They wouldn’t let anyone stay in the building. I had one sister and two brothers at the time of the earthquake, and my mother was pregnant. Oh it was hard then.

“After three days we came over to Oakland and then I remember we went to live in a tent by Lake Merrit. And then my father’d dig clams and we ate the clams from Lake Merrit. But he got sick from eating the clams. He died from typhoid fever.  Contaminated water. He died before my sister was born. My sister was born four days after my father died.”